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Animated Atrocities 118/Transcript
You know, my birthday is only a couple days away; July 21st. So I thought that I might give myself a gift and look at one of the worst cartoons ever made. Hooray. Why do I do this to myself? But seriously, what am I looking at here? This little gem is from a cartoon called Paddy the Pelican, and it's about as old as an atrocity gets. This one dates to 1954, and yes, it is known as one of the worst cartoons ever made. And you know, me being who I am, I thought that I'd test that claim. I've seen a lot of bad cartoons. Adult Party Cartoon, Mr. Pickles, The Nutshack, 12 Oz. Mouse, Mega Babies, Pixel Pinkie... Could this really be worse than all of those? Keep in mind that it's hard to find information on cartoons this old. No one really knows why this was made or if it was even really made for television. But what is known is that it was made by one of the worst cartoonists of all time. A man by the name of Sam Singer, who is known to many as 'the Ed Wood of animators.' With claims like that, this seems to be a rite of passage for animation critics that I've long been missing. Could this truly be animation's Plan 9 from Outer Space? Perhaps it's (The) Room or Birdemic. Let's find out as we dive into this piece of copper light. opens with its theme "music" Oh dear, I feel like I've made a grave mistake... Yes, it's a brilliant idea to start your cartoon by laughing at your audience like a demented circus clown. Also, the introduction is really fucking quiet compared to the rest of the short. Narration: faintly Hi there, boys and girls! Paddy Pelican is paying a visit to Kenny Crow, a thrifty old bird friend, so let's join them! What did you say? I can't hear you over the demented laughing! And no, even for this era, this was not common. Most openings like this didn't even have narration. And this kinda proves why. Kenny: (...) have enough to buy a corn field, Paddy. Yes I will. Paddy: Holy scuttle, Kenny, it isn't safe here. You should.. You should-- You should take this to the bank! Kenny: Aw, don't worry, Paddy. I have a wonderful hiding place for the bank. Ohhh boy... I honestly don't know what I was expecting, and I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but this is shit. Where do I even start? The lack of color is understandable. It was most likely made for television back when colored television wasn't really common. But the barren backgrounds, the minimal movement, and the lip synching... Oh god, this lip synching! It.. It is the worst in history! Every scene it's two frames back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... For reference, I want to show you an episode of Crusader Rabbit. Now Crusader Rabbit is a very important cartoon to the history of animation. It was the first cartoon ever made specifically for television. It wasn't like Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry where the theatrical shorts were just moved on to the smaller screen. And yeah, here we see some more limited animation, but there was more motion. The backgrounds were more vibrant. And more importantly, the scenarios are more interesting. But believe it or not, the animation isn't the worst part of this cartoon. That would probably be the voice acting. Whoever is voicing EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER shouldn't be voicing any character at all. Every single line is grating, and the characters just ramble on and on about nothing! Also, this show has a soundtrack... if you can call it that. If anything, that's what really kills it. We have one person squawking in multiple voices at themselves to bad and minimalist animation that half the time turns off while someone in the background goes back and forth on two keys on a pipe organ. And oh my god we haven't even started on the plot! Okay, this particular episode is about a crow who's saved up a lot of money. Paddy the Pelican suggests that he takes it to the bank, but the crow has a secret hiding compartment. ...Is that a clown in the hiding panel? Fox: Boy oh boy, this is my lucky day. I've been wondering where I could get some money, but I don't have to worry any further... Okay, I know that back then people did some really crazy stuff to try and save money, but what the hell? A black screen in a five minute short? And then the fox just pops into existence on the other side of the screen. Most cartoons back then were focused on humor. You know, telling jokes. So I'm going to assume that's what this is going to try and do. And having the bad guy try to steal something from the good guy while getting comically shit on is a pretty common joke plotline in animation. Let's see how they do it. Fox: This is gonna be real great... Kenny: Golly wow, Paddy, I gotta leave for work, so, I'm gonna take my money and hide it and I'm gonna lock the door cause I'm gonna make some more money to buy a corn field. I can't take any chances. Fox: Oh I can hardly wait to (...) So apparently what the characters are talking about is entirely improvised. So it's like Rick and Morty if you inject it with plutonium and still got brain cancer and died. Fox: I can't get one of Paddy Pelican's fingerprints, but a footprint will be just as good. I'll send him to jail where he can't bother me anymore. I'm not much of an artist, but this is one job I can do. Heh, famous last words. to the fox's break-in Fox:Ooff! That hurt. That hurt. Wow. This cartoon. It makes me angry. It makes me angry. Grr. ...Wow, no. I can't even sound like I give that little of a shit even though I'm actually trying to sound as disinterested as possible. I just can't do it. Fox: Say, that's clever. Nobody will ever find this without knowing about it. Hmm, boy, this is heavier than I thought. You already established that. Either be funny or stop fucking repeating yourself. It's not hard to tell an ongoing story for five minutes. So the wolf-fox thing says that he's going to frame Paddy the Pelican, and he says this over a very obvious animation loop. What the hell is with all of the darkness? Is this at night? If it isn't, it's not really conveyed very well. Then we cut to a brick going right over the head of Paddy the Pelican because this show fails at everything. And then he gets into a fight with the crow and we see... the worst animation of all time. THE WORST ANIMATION, OF ALL TIME. Honestly, some of these loops... Like... 12 Oz. Mouse has more fluid animation than that. You know, a show that was dedicated to looking as cheap as possible. Look at these stills and these loops. Back to Crusader Rabbit. There wasn't much motion, but we're constantly given new scenes. It doesn't stay in one place for very long. It managed to be visually interesting. This doesn't. While the character designs are decent, although they look like they were traced or stolen from Disney, everything else about this is technically some of the worst animation ever put to screen. "Ren Seeks Help", for instance. While I hate it more than something like this, the art style there was mostly good and fluid and it showed what it wanted to very well. Some would say too well. There are twelve principles of animation, and this show follows literally none of them. Honestly, if you are an animation student, this is probably the best thing that I've reviewed to showcase exactly what not to do. It's like someone learned as much about cartoons and animation as possible and tried to do everything in their power and their ability to go against all of those rules in some kind of temper tantrum. Oh wait, that was 12 Oz. Mouse. This is worse than that! As for plot... Okay, so the fox steals the money, and gets Paddy blamed by some footprint things, and it looks like the fox is going to get away with it. But he comes back to further blame Paddy, even though if he was innocent, he shouldn't know anything about the piggy bank. And they even state that later in the episode and oh my god how do you have such a convolutedly broken plot in the span of five minutes!? What proves Paddy's innocence is that there's only footprints leading away from the safe, except that Paddy is a pelican, and pelicans are birds, and birds can fly, you know, unless they were weighted down, like if they were carrying a piggy bank. Also, for some reason it's really... really goddamn dark in this scene. You know what the real kicker is? They've used this exact same animation loop before! How do you fuck up lighting in an animation cycle that was recycled from before and did fine then? Nevermind how you fuck up lighting in animation at all. No, really, I am legitimately curious. What is the method that was undertaken to fuck up like this? Because I legitimately do not know! I think the fox is paralyzed, or frozen... or dead... so they chase him down and come to his house. The crow takes the money out of his piggy bank and then throws the piggy bank back at the fox. After a musical scare chord because of the confusing as fuck organ, we see that the fox has a bruise on his head and another absolutely terrible failure at comedy. So, uh... wow. I understand that this was made a long time ago; It was made in a time when people didn't know as much about animation as they do now, and they didn't know everything we do now to make it good and appealing and funny, and this was also in a time where people had to vastly cut corners to make animation on television even affordable, but even by the standards of its day, this fails spectacularly! Remember, Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound also came out of this era. But is this the worst cartoon ever made? It depends on what you mean. Like, does it have the worst content of all time? No, it isn't gory or offensive or disgusting or anything like that. But I don't think that was ever up for debate. Good luck putting Adult Party Cartoon on in the 50's. But from the technical aspects, is Paddy the Pelican the worst cartoon ever made? Honestly I think that it just might be. Let's start with the voice acting being absolutely atrocious. With 12 Oz. Mouse, at least the people sounded like they were different voice actors. And when I think of series that were animated in a similar lazy way such as My Life Me or 12 Oz. Mouse, they at least look better, even if that's largely because of the advent of technology. Color can get you a long way; as can computers. If anything, it shows just how far we've come, and how much we've figured out our way since this atrocity. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to celebrate my 24th birthday with this behind me... Category:Transcripts Category:Season 4